FEMA gets down to business at Rocky Boy

A spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency said his agency has increased its presence on Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation and expects next week to start setting project numbers to reimburse disaster work on the reservation and in Hill County to repair the heavy flooding in mid-June.

"We have been here since June 24," Ricardo Zuniga, FEMA external affairs officer said this morning.

After high snowmelt and heavy rains in May saturated the ground and caused flooding in that month, 5 inches of rain that fell in the Bear's Paw Mountains starting June 15 ramped up the flooding, again damaging property in Hill County off of the reservation and devastating buildings and infrastructure on Rocky Boy.

President Barack Obama July 10 responded to a request by Gov. Brian Schweitzer, declaring Rocky Boy and Hill County federal disaster areas and eligible for public assistance from the federal government.

"There were certain things we could do before … the declaration," Zuniga said, adding that now that the designation has been declared, things can be stepped up considerably.

FEMA helped the Chippewa Cree Tribal government at Rocky Boy with planning and organizational issues as well as providing life-saving and lifesustaining services as soon as the agency arrived, he said.

That included providing potable water — the water supply was wiped out to hundreds of homes, and was a primary reason for the evacuation of 50 families to Havre. FEMA has now delivered its third and fourth truckload of bottled water to the reservation, Zuniga said.

The agency also helped facilitate communications, providing 35 handheld radios to Tribal employees to reduce the strain on the emergency radio frequencies and equipment the workers had been using. FEMA also contacted Verizon, which installed a mobile cellular telephone signal booster free of charge. That has improved communications immensely for people working on the disaster, he said, as did FEMA contact ing the Federal Communications Commission and facilitating the repair of a damaged radio repeater on the reservation.

FEMA also helped the reservation gain the use of two mobile medical units through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to help take up the slack from the loss of the new clinic at the reservation, and is bringing in 200 cleanup kits to help people assess and clean up the damage to their homes, he said.

Part of its work so far also has included assisting the reservation in preparing financial assessments.

The agency now is preparing to schedule a kickoff meeting with the Hill County government, which already has been held at Rocky Boy. That meeting allows FEMA staff members to review issues like the application process and eligible projects with the local government officials.

The Rocky Boy government has elected to administer the disaster declaration itself, which is allowed under federal law for a sovereign Tribal government.

In Hill County, the state public assistance officer will administer the declaration, as required by federal law.

Zuniga said FEMA is establishing a main office with about 40 workers in Great Falls, primarily due to a shortage of hotel space in Havre. A team of 15 to 20 FEMA employees will be at Rocky Boy, working with officials on the reservation and in Hill County off the reservation to set actual project numbers.

"They will be here for at least a month, perhaps longer," he said.

The FEMA workers will be setting the process for reimbursement, Zuniga said. The actual work will be performed by government employees or by contractors hired to complete the projects.

That reimbursement will include eligible work already completed on the reservation and by Hill County employees, such as emergency road and bridge repairs and reconnecting homes to the water supply.

"We're here to make sure the applicant gets every penny for which they are eligible," Zuniga said.